Will you be there?

Share your story about how you decided to come to Costa Mesa for "Coming Home to the Interior Landscape." Even if you are not able to be in Costa Mesa at the annual Spiritual Directors International events, this blog is a way to participate. What are your hopes? What do you imagine? During our time together, you will have the opportunity to continue your story at the Spiritual Directors International table.

Costa Mesa Events 2006

As we look forward to this year's events in Costa Mesa, we hope that you will take the time to offer your reflections on the upcoming gathering.

We will also be posting during and after the event.

To submit a post, e-mail it to sdi.blogger@gmail.com. It will then be reviewed and posted.

Chicago Symposium and Conference 2005

You know how sometimes you meet someone you're familiar with in a certain setting; and because you're not in that setting any more, you have to go through a litany of possibilities before you identify who it is? Where have I met you before? It happened to me recently with a pharmacist at the drugstore I frequent here in Gloucester. I met her at a concert. We both tried not to let the other know that we were looking at one another, both trying to place the face. I thought for a moment that she was a local news anchor. Then suddenly it struck me that she had two days ago handed me the latest prescription. "How good to see you here!" And we both went back to our separate lives.

I'm consoled when I recall meeting all the old friends swarming into the Chicago hotel where Spiritual Directors International collected itself last Easter Week. It was the opposite kind of experience.It could have been in Miami or Atchison, Kansas, but I would know those faces anywhere. We are our own context, so we can show up and be known immediately in a host of venues. We know each other from having shared our passion for the things of God, our desire to help searchers find the traces of that God in their lives, from having come to SDI year after year because we believe that this ministry cannot be done alone and that we need to strengthen one another. "How good to see you again! what's been happening in your world?" What a gift, that presence of such people in one's life! What a gift, that we have a date once a year to hear of the new works of God in one another.

Meanwhile, I give real thanks for a reliable pharmacist who also likes Beethoven.

—Jim Keegan, SJ

A Personal Reflection

Who would ever have guessed that I would be attending an international conference for spiritual directors? The conference chairperson said that it was the largest assemblage of spiritual directors in any one place; registration had been closed off a month before. They had no more room, topping out at 554 registrants. All told, there were about 600 people at the Crowne Plaza O’ Hare Hotel in Chicago. Up until this year, Spiritual Directors’ International had sufficiently low enough attendance for their meetings to gather at different retreat houses. What was happening in the world, I wondered, that such a large assemblage could be taking place?

The ratios looked to be pretty normal for such gatherings, gender-wise, by my own local calculations, with typically more women than men. That there were a number of men felt refreshing to me. There were also lots of religious and clergy, with a seeming preponderance of Catholics, which was also what I had anticipated. Such people were quite familiar with the words “confessor,” “spiritual director,” and “pastoral counselor” as part of the rich RC 2000 year tradition. This meeting, however, reflected a shift, somehow, in general consciousness. There were many more lay Roman Catholics and also many more people who were in other faith traditions. My own roommate, for example, Jeanette Renouf, was Episcopalean. She had begun the first program in spiritual direction in Tucson at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church and had also assisted Beverly Lanzetta to construct the curriculum for the interfaith, retreat format program, at the Redemptorist Renewal Center at Picture Rocks. She was not clergy but held advanced degrees in psychology and divinity. It was through her invitation to be roommates that I found myself beckoned to attend the meeting.

The workshop that was my favorite was presented by Sandy Jardine and Jinks Hoffman. These women had both attended the first Jewish spiritual direction program in existence presently and they had agreed to co-present at this meeting. Sandy lives in Phoenix and Jinks lives in Toronto. Both are counselors as well as spiritual directors. It was a 3 and a half hour presentation which they had entitled: “Exile and Repair.’ I found it to be a heartful blending of biblical and personal story, steeped with experience of depth psychology and archetypal knowing. These women presented themselves as simultaneously broken and whole. Fragmented and healing. By their realness, they gave the participants a chance to acknowledge the same in themselves. Yet I could tell that the power of God was moving in and through them. They used poetry, haunting Jewish melody, and other sensory experiences to elicit a deeper sense of repair and coming home. We were encouraged to use the symbolism of the tablets at Mount Sinai which had shattered into pieces to recall our own souls’ brokenness and wholeness. We drew with markers and crayolas on our own paper tablets. I recalled the recent brokenness of my body, single-breasted and long-scarred over my right chest. A younger woman recalled the brokenness of her own life with small children, yearning for time to be quiet and still. A sacredness filled the room; nothing was too taboo. We were in the presence of God and we all knew it. Sandy and Jinks provided the safe container for us. Sandy and Jinks gave us permission to shed tears. Jinks shed deep tears of joy and release before us, without shame, without embarrassment. When she read her poetry aloud to us, she wept. It was without a doubt one of the most sacred, poignant experiences of my life. We could be open and real about the Mystery that calls us to life.

There were many opportunities to network and to browse through the latest books and CDs. The large group met together for two luncheon meetings and one dinner meeting. There were three plenary sessions featuring the invited keynote speaker, Joan Borysenko. For my own health and well-being, I was aware of the overloading stimulation that such conferences can be. In my younger adulthood, I have attended similar meetings put on by national nursing and massage organizations. I have always enjoyed learning and hearing presentations that validate and augment my own understanding. At 53, with more limited energy reserves, I knew that to find the proper balance was essential for me. I could get caught up in the excitement and lose myself. I could no longer do that. I would excuse myself to rest in my room between sessions. Jeanette and I agreed to have breakfast each morning in the room. When the plenary session let out at 4 pm on Saturday, we returned to the room for rest, conversation, pizza, and a glass of wine. It was a wind-down ending to a very full conference.

Yes, the shift in consciousness was evident at the annual Spiritual Directors International meeting of 2005. In the middle of the meeting on Saturday, we paused for a moment of prayerful silence in the passing of Pope John Paul II. Was that coincidental or was it a sign from God? My sense is that when we listen, we can hear God speak to us. The meeting was timely and “fitting and right and proper for everything toward salvation.” I was decidedly glad to be a part of it all.

—Melanie Supan Sethney

A Reflection

There was an interweaving this time – no one was on the inside or the outside.

As we wove our circle dance, I noticed the great diversity of souls and faces – some looked directly at me, others didn’t even see my face. I wondered about that.

But one man – our eyes deeply met. He took my hand, squeezed it and we barely let go as we moved onto new partners. Later in the evening he found me. We sat together – this Priest and this Jew. The love that poured forth between us was so huge it was almost unnamable. He told me he felt healed. I went to bed feeling changed.

We wondered and marveled how this had happened – this surprise meeting between two separate worlds. We called it mystery. We called it God. We called it love. We called it gratitude.

—Vivian Feintech

Stories I heard

As I reflect back on the Spiritual Directors International events in Chicago, I keep recalling stories I heard that touched me deeply.

One was at the symposium where folks from different cultures shared what it means to learn in an environment not one's own.

One was a Chinese woman from Hong Kong who witnessed what it feels like to be in exile from one's own people and the deep connection of discovering a God who looks like me.

Another story was shared by a Jewish woman in one of the workshops who came to know a sense of G-d and her call that transcended her narrower expectation. Both women have challenged me to be more open to the very rich and diverse experiences of those I meet in spiritual direction and in our spiritual direction internship.

Cathy Murtha, Bloomfield, Conneticut, USA

Into Exile … Strengthened with Prayer

“My daddy died today”

These were the first words I uttered to anyone the morning of my first workshop at the SDI conference in Chicago. It perpetuated the shock wave already present within me to hear my own voice proclaim in word what my heart and head knew as truth but could not yet fully comprehend. My daddy, Leo Joseph Appelbaum, Jr. (yes, I am a namesake) died from complications of congestive heart failure Friday morning at 12:47am to free him from an 8 year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease the first day of the SDI conference.

My first workshop was “Reclaiming Your Creative Spirit”, a session involving work with canvas paper, pencil, oil pastels and an art form called ‘mandala’. I sat motionless and numb, yet warmed somehow, sensing I was in a safe place. What would transpire in that next three hours was to become life changing and spirit lifting.

As instructed, we were to let God lead us as we allowed expression of our interiority to from a pattern within or outside (if need be) the mandala circle. With the jumble of emotion that came with my “Josephine package” that morning, you can begin to imagine what happened as I picked up the first pastel crayon. Anger seethed within me and powered out my body through the crayon onto the canvas. The workshop presenter, Richard Bough, as he began to stroll around the room and observe, noticed immediately the expressive power on my canvas. He stopped at my spot and for a moment, I hesitated, and then allowed God to “do with me what God willed”. I looked up at Richard and said, “My daddy just died today at 12:47am”. Those words were crushing and freeing all at the same time. Blessed Richard was not sure what to do next. He waited for my cue.

I chose to enter the exile of the valley of death and plunge myself into whatever God desired to bring forth.

As my anger surfaced and rage and dark color poured onto the canvas in front of me, tears flowed. We were encouraged to do anything and everything with our private expression of spirituality before us in color and pattern. I opened my heart, soul, mind, emotion and oil pastel box. The process had begun.

I believe I experienced, in brief glimpses, each stage of grief that morning in my world that was splashing before me in color and shape in the form of my mandala. The finished product is now at home with me and will be framed as a permanent memorial to my dear daddy. It was incredible and beautiful.

The top portion of the mandala circle became heaven, filled with clouds and hope. At the center was my heart, red with love and sadness in a mix of grief and delightful memories of daddy. My own tears dropped onto to the canvas at one point and God moved my hands in a way I could not. I found my fingers mixing colors that became living water of life eternal flooding my canvas. The precise spot where the tears fell onto to the canvas is marked on the drawing with the distinct shape of a teardrop.

As I continued to immerse myself in the mandala experience I felt free and peace filled. It became obvious to me this was no ordinary artistic experience. This was God’s warm way of helping me enter the difficult exile into the valley of death I would face in the coming days ahead.

The finished mandala contains an engraving done with the sharp corner edge of a ruler that marks the date, day and exact time my daddy entered eternity. As I shared my “mandala story” with the other participants in this workshop that morning, I realized we had all moved from simple artwork to sacred sharing. It is an experience I will never forget. It was the experience I needed.

It is interesting as I reflect back now on that weekend how powerful the movement of God was and is and how many times I resist the gifts God so desires to grace upon me. If you had asked me if I thought Chicago and a Spiritual Director International Retreat with 550 people I had never met before was a place I would have wanted to begin to grieve my daddy, I would not only have said , “NO”, I would have considered it insanity. God, however, in the master glory of God’s plans, knows me better than I know myself. I was in the exact correct place at the exactly correct time surrounded by more love, grace, understanding and wisdom than I ever imagined.

This was my first experience with Spiritual Director’s International, but I assure you it will not be my last. For anyone on the edge of considering involvement in any way with this organization, I urge you forward. Blessings await you that are impossible to do justice with the limits of language.

Often, in times of crisis, the question reflected upon “after all is said and done” is: “If you could do it all over again the same way, would you?” With absolute certainty I can tell you, “Yes”.

The days of memorial and burial and final goodbyes for my daddy were emotional. There was, however, a graced presence that I felt and needed. I was asked to sing for the funeral celebration mass as is done in the Roman Catholic tradition. The prayer, love, encouragement and direction I received because I had followed God to Chicago, held me in an embrace I will have forever.

My daddy’s life was fruitful and full. Our goodbye to him was stunning and filled with God and life. I have many friend, known and unknown to thank and treasure from around the world who walked the first steps of this road with me. I will be forever grateful. Amen.

With great love and thanks,

I am,

Josephine Ludwig

Leo’s precious daughter and God’s honored princess.

April 1, 2005

Photos from Friday

There are a few photos below. To see more, click here.